Global Tax Haven Industry: World Leaders Still ‘Working On It.’

(Cross-posted from www.taxjustice.net on February 23, 2015 / Comment: Surely, governments have the resources/expertise to shut down the global tax evasion industry. So, after that trillion-dollar/year industry has been humming along and operational for decades, why hasn’t global tax evasion been shut down?)

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Settling accounts: what happens after SwissLeaks?

A major leak of incriminating HSBC records last week resulted in print and television news coverage around the globe, trended on Twitter for several days and prompted several governments to start long-anticipated investigations. Through its Swiss entity, the British banking juggernaut helped customers from around the world to hide their money for tax evasion or other nefarious purposes without any questions asked. In fact, in several of the ‘scripts’ which accompany the accounts, banking personnel are seen to be very willing to accommodate dubious requests—from allowing cash withdrawals worth millions of dollars to setting up sham legal entities to obscure the ownership of the funds.

The idea behind AEoI is simple: financial institutions everywhere will determine which of their clients are foreign tax residents. Each institution will provide information about them to its ‘home government’, which will forward this ‘automatically’ at set intervals to the government whose citizens it concerns. Essentially, instead of governments relying on their own tax residents to disclose their foreign accounts, a tax resident’s foreign bank will let its government know about them.

To illustrate why such a requirement would be disingenuous, look at offshore holding around the world. Residents of Africa and Latin America are estimated to hold over a quarter of their assets offshore, whereas the volume of offshore assets from other countries held in the poorest countries is negligible. Nigeria, with one of the most developed financial sectors in Africa, holds less than 1% of its bank assets in the UK, for example. In other words, wealthier states generally have little to gain economically from exchanging information with poorer countries, whereas the latter have a great deal to gain. If the criteria for exchange include whether wealthier countries obtain a substantial economic benefit, the intended global development benefits of the plan will be lost before the first bytes of data are exchanged.

It is in everyone’s interest that automatic information exchange becomes a global standard, with all jurisdictions participating as soon as possible. But it is widely accepted that developing countries will face challenges in joining the AEoI system and fully benefiting. Both for OECD members and developing countries the stakes are high, as potential loopholes in the global system could be devastating. Creating a system where developing countries are effectively excluded risks the creation of new tax havens outside of the exchange, as well as depriving developing countries of the necessary information for them to enforce their tax systems effectively.

A good idea in principle, but the way it is intended to be put into practice is controversial.

Through the G8, the G20 and the Global Forum—a platform hosted by the OECD with 125 participating governments—rich states have promised help to poor countries to build the capacity they need, but these commitments have yet to be honoured. Investing in AEoI is one of many pressing issues facing developing countries, so if and when they make a commitment to it they should be ensured that support will be there.

Such technical assistance should engage developing-country tax authorities and investigative and prosecutorial personnel, to demonstrate how AEoI information can be mined for specific data or used to identify trends. For this to happen, developing countries need to be receiving data. The FTC strongly recommends a phased approach for the poorest countries (those with gross national income per capita of less than $4,125), to prepare them for full co-operation in a global system of information exchange.

Identifying assets

Meanwhile, potential benefits for developing countries can also be assessed by identifying the assets of their residents held overseas, for example using data collected by the Bank of International Settlements. As sufficiently disaggregated data are not available publicly, only government-led research is currently possible here. Governments are encouraged to publish the volume of data being exchanged, the number of individuals involved and the extent of the assets concerned.

These statistics would give citizens, journalists, politicians and organisations an idea about the potential impact of AEoI. Research on the deterrent effect—which may be the main impact—would very likely prompt countries to prioritise participation. And what, other than such a deterrent of tax evasion, would prevent the next big scandal?

But even if all the loopholes in global information exchange are fixed, this is a solution to today’s problems, not tomorrow’s. Criminals and their enablers are creative, so the only way to prevent future scandals is to shed light on what criminals and tax dodgers are trying to hide. This is why online registers of assets for all legal persons and arrangements are necessary and should be publicly available. And law-enforcement bodies around the world should have access to information about other stores of wealth, such as gold and art held in freeports.

If we turn a blind eye to these loopholes, economic development for all will continue to be undermined by illicit actors looking to exploit them.

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3 thoughts on “Global Tax Haven Industry: World Leaders Still ‘Working On It.’”

Ordinary US expatriates with more than $10,000 in combined checking/savings already have their bank accounts monitored by foreign governments and the US Treasury under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Corporations, on the other hand, seem to be exempt from FATCA.

Stuart,
Yes. Corporations and “non-ordinary” wealthy people who can afford the “smartest” accountants and lawyers. The situation you describe has a perfect synthesis with average working class taxpayers and those who can afford paying for successful tax evasion. It also corresponds to separate legal/justice systems for the ordinary and non-ordinary. Steal a frozen pizza and end up behind bars. Perpetrate frauds which take the global economy down and entertain wealthy friends and clients in bars.
Thanks,
Jerry

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